Sorry to cross-post (my original post is in the NZ forum) but I figured there might be more knowledge and experience of these kind of issues in this forum.

Here's my issue:
I'm attempting to book business-class flights on AirNZ for myself and my partner SYD-AKL-RAR-AKL-SYD sometime between September and November, using United Mileage Plus miles. After searching extensively on Galileo for a combination of flights which had 2 business-class redemption seats (I-class) on dates which would work with us - which took a lot of doing, especially on the RAR-AKL segment - I called Mileage Plus, only to find there was no award availability on some of the flights. I had always understood that *A airlines had access to the same award inventory, i.e. if there were any I-class seats available they could be booked by any *A programme, however after speaking to AirNZ AirPoints it transpires that only some of their award inventory is available to the other *A airlines, while the rest is held back for NZ AirPoints members.

This may not be news to anyone, and I guess it makes sense for NZ to save some availability for their own frequent flyers. My question is: is there any way to get any more inventory released/made available to UA? We're only lowly Premiers on UA, so I doubt that is much help. I earned a significant chunk of those miles on NZ anyway, so it's hardly a freebie!

Any help would be gratefully received...